The Shield of Weeping Ghosts - James P. Davis [84]
Bastun stumbled toward the doorway in shock, staring as the soldier was impaled on a pike from behind. He retreated outside. The ground became uneven beneath him, and he fell against a wall of broken stone and rubble. He replaced the Breath in his belt, sighing in relief as the scenes faded and the present reasserted itself in his mind.
"He saw me," he said in disbelief, repeating the phrase over and over as he turned to assess the climb before him. Pulling himself higher, he found Duras waiting for him several feet up.
"Take my hand," the warrior said, leaning over the edge of the ruined pile the wall had become.
Accepting the offer, Bastun reached the top and stood beside the warrior, still breathless and wide-eyed from the experience. The others made their way to the second guard tower far ahead of the pair. Thaena stood by, staring after them as they climbed over the fallen wall. The fang set their swords and axes to work again, beating at a frozen door in the base of the tower. Syrolf looked little pleased that Bastun had survived, and he sneered before shouting at the berserkers to quicken their strokes.
As Duras and Bastun reached them, the group was entering the tower. Thaena greeted them with a nod and turned away.
Inside, Bastun noted the first few steps of an old staircase ascending from the dust and rubble of what remained of the tower's interior. Anilya's men set to work on a second door, presumably leading through the interior of the next stretch of the western wall.
"We'll take as few chances as possible atop the wall from here on," Anilya said as Duras approached her. "We can use the inner wall to reach the last guard tower and ascend from there to-"
"That's presuming we don't need wings there as well," Bastun said as he studied the ruined floors above them. He smiled beneath his mask. Staring back toward the last tower, across the. field of rubble now being overcome by settling mists, he wondered at that face in the ice. Though slivers of fear and the strange chill of the past's touch remained with him, the scholar in him could not help but be fascinated by what he'd witnessed.
Thaena did not reply, turning away to watch the progress of digging the door free of the ice and stone. Bastun shook his head, cursing the timing and promising himself to record all that he remembered in his own journal when given the time. The thought gave him pause and he reflected on the expectation that he would survive the night. Though well-grounded in what could occur if what he suspected was true, he was surprised by the stubborn presence of hope in the back of his mind.
"What happened back there on the wall, Bastun? When you fell?" Duras asked, his voice bringing the vremyonni from his thoughts. "I thought I heard you say something about your sister."
There was an odd gravity in Duras's voice. It banished his fascination with the far past and brought him fully back into the present. He found he couldn't meet his old friend's gaze, and he looked instead to the floor. Sitting in his gut like a meal gone bad was the memory of Duras and Thaena's embrace. He did not yet feel any compulsion to share his thoughts, nor did he trust the voice that would carry those thoughts. The only other to whom he might have confided was dead and buried, Master Keffrass's grave not yet even cold in his memory. "It doesn't matter now. I-"
The sound of cracking wood stopped him in mid-sentence, and he turned as the last few splinters of the door fell inward to reveal the coal black darkness of the inner wall.
The scent of stale air-and something else, familiar yet indefinable-drew him toward the doorway, even as the sellswords fell back, expressions of shock crossing their faces. Several of the fang glanced inside as well, then looked away and whispered prayers to the Three as they marked themselves with runes of warding.
Bastun studied these reactions